


When Anna Fell (for Micaela)

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant





	When Anna Fell (for Micaela)

_Castiel, come down with me._  


Anael hovers close, the edges of their graces almost touching. Water ripples below them over drifting blooms of jellyfish, lacy tendrils clutching after, as if they are aware of the angels’ presence, as if they want to reach out and touch—and Anael wishes that she could touch back, feel the kiss of their nematocysts, their stinging tentacles.

Castiel doesn’t question—always a loyal soldier, serving their father, serving heaven, serving Anael.

They meet on the beach, both in female vessels, near the place they had stood as sentinels for a millenia. She kicks off her shoes, peels off her socks, scrunches her toes in the sand, grit grinding in the tender webs of her toes.

“Take your shoes off,” Anael says with her tongue, relishing the way the syllables buzz in her throat, the way the words slide through her mouth, the snare of the consonants, staccato-sharp, against her teeth. She sits in the sand, runs her hand up the legs of her vessel, fingers lingering over the way her knees had been scraped up where she had fallen off her bicycle. She tucks her long skirt into her belt so that she can splash in the serf without getting wet.

“Why?” Castiel asks even while kneeling, fingers, almost hidden by the cuffs of a too-big jacket, unlacing sneakers, feet slipping out, toes peering through ragged cotton holes.

“Because it feels good,” Anael says.

“It feels like sand.”

“Come on. Let’s go into the water.”

She runs through the sand—there’s too much give and it makes her muscles sore—but she charges into the waves, laughing as water splashes up in her face, as salt stings the sores on her knees. Castiel follows after, pants still not rolled up, still wearing the jacket.

Water laps at Castiel’s feet. The trousers darken, sodden and salty. “Who are we supposed to be watching?”

Anael gestures to the people dotting the beach: sunbathing, digging, surfing, reading. “All of them.”

“We can’t see as well through these eyes,” Castiel says.

Anael walks along the shore, deep enough for the water to splash her ankles with each oncoming wave. “We’re not supposed to.” She lifts her hands in front of her face, turns them in the sun.

Castiel follows suit, mirrors her as she drags a finger along the delicate lines of bones and tendons in her wrist.

“Humans have more eyes than just these,” she says. She stoops, picks up a crab attempting to bury its way into the sand. “They see with their flesh. With their hands. With their bodies.”

Castiel takes the crab from Anael. “These eyes can’t see how this crab has been made, can’t see the inner workings of it.” Castiel lets it fall back onto the sand.

They walk without speaking. Anael throws balls that children lose back to their owners, leaving streaks of mud across the palms of her hands. Castiel’s trousers are wet up to the knees. The sun lowers, the air chills, and Anael folds her grace in upon itself, ties it away from the outer edges of her vessel, so that her skin will pucker with goosebumps, so that shivers will trace their way down her limbs. She puts a hand in the small of Castiel’s back, steering them both toward a bonfire blazing in the twilight, smelling of burnt pine needles and sap, earthy and green. Castiel is warm—there are no goosebumps—nothing but the thrumming heat of grace.

People are drinking—Anael drinks with them. They sit on their laps and they kiss each other, hands running up and down sides and backs, finger tips reading the pores and blemishes of their skin, following the story of their bones.

Anael swallows hard, hugs herself.

 “We should return,” Castiel says, looking down at damp and muddy clothes. “I promised that she would be back in time to pick up her son.”

Anael tugs at Castiel’s jacket and, when Castiel shrugs out of it, she wraps it around herself. “What’s his name?”

“Jimmy,” Castiel says. “Jimmy Novak.”

They walk together—not in the water this time because Anael’s feet are tinged with blue—but on the sand. The give and take of their steps brush off the mud caked between their toes. They walk close together, and Anael edges closer because Castiel is warm and she still contains her grace so that she can feel the evening—the cold, the mosquitoes biting her skin, the welts red and itching.

Their knuckles brush together, and Anael slips her hand in Castiel’s.

Castiel glances down, eyes wide, frowning a little.

Anael smiles, tightening her hold a little more until she’s gripping tight.

Then Castiel squeezes around her, fingers hard between her knuckles, and her palm sweats in Castiel’s, grace warming the chill right out of her, as they walk hand in hand along the ocean.

When she returns to heaven, Anael looks down upon earth, imagines her being expressed by physical shape, imagines hands in hers, imagines others learning her name through touch. She finds a slender thread of grace, worries at it, forcing herself not to recoil at the pain that floods over her, wonders what angels are besides their grace—in addition to their grace. She pulls at it a little more, wavering under the pain.

She is so much more than this grace as she pulls and pulls, grace falling all around her, fluttering and streaming from her like jellyfish, and though she has no mouth, no body, there is noise coming from her, as if the molecules that form her fracture without the strength of grace to bind them together, as if every tug shatters their bond, defacing the solitude and quiet of heaven until Castiel is there—

_I heard you—_

And Castiel sees the grace puddling around her, and, hesitating only a moment, gathers it up, keeps it safe so that not a bit of it is lost, as Anael uproots the deepest part of herself until, weightless and formless, with no celestial tether to keep her in orbit around god, around heaven, she falls and plummets, burning. And the pain is pure, and she feels every hurt, and she feels the rush of air kissing the fire away, and she opens herself up, waiting for earth, for water to welcome her so that she can heave herself onto a shoreline, discovering legs for the first time, falling to her knees for the first time, and crawling onwards for the first time—palms sore from the cliff faces, fingernails black from the encrusted dirt, and the sun in her hair, in her eyes.

Castiel watches the comet tail of Anael’s fall, her grace spun into crystal, held safe in the folds of being and form and grace.

 _Anael_?

But she does not answer the cry, does not call back from across the universe.

Everything is silent. Heaven, with so many angels stationed on earth and other planets, is empty. Not even the leaves of the garden whisper together.

Sure that it would be safe because humans do not see like angels, Castiel flings Anael’s grace after her—a key to heaven so that, if she ever desires to return, she can—because of course Father would forgive her—for He is merciful and kind and just.


End file.
